Educational Problems in College and University: Addresses Delivered at the Educational Conference Held at the University of Michigan, October Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twenty, on the Occasion of the Inauguration of President Marion Leroy Burton

Fortunately for the purpose of this discussion, little
time need be spent in the definition of terms. The question
of academic freedom has been agitated for more than a
generation in America, its metes and bounds have been
marked out and may now be said to be rather clearly
understood by both the academic fraternity and the
general public. The statement of President Schurman in
an address before the National Association of State Universities in 1909 is perhaps as clear an expression as may
be found of the ideal conditions under which an educational institution may be expected to do its best work. "The
supreme test," he says, "is whether the people of the state
will on the one hand tax themselves to support it (the
state university) and on the other impose upon themselves
a self-denying ordinance to leave it severly alone, so that
it may select its own members by the application of its
own intellectual standards and the members thus chosen
may be absolutely free to investigate, to teach, and to publish whatever they believe to be the truth." This certainly puts the matter in clear not to say bald language, and at
once squares the issue. It is well, however, that the same
speaker at once proceeds to remark that "if our people do
not already possess this conception of a university, they
must be educated up to it, for a university can not flourish
on any other condition," for I for one have no doubt that
when the case is presented to the public in the manner referred to, it will induce an immediate unfavorable reaction
upon the part of the people. They would unhesitatingly

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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: Educational Problems in College and University:Addresses Delivered at the Educational Conference Held at the University of Michigan, October Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twenty, on the Occasion of the Inauguration of President Marion Leroy Burton.
Contributors: John Brumm Lewis - Editor.
Publisher: The University of Michigan.
Place of publication: Ann Arbor, MI.
Publication year: 1921.
Page number: 93.

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